The Executive’s Guide to Disciplined Agile: Business Agility for Established Enterprises

An agile enterprise increases value through effective execution and delivery in a timely and reactive manner. Such organizations do this by streamlining the flow of information, ideas, decision making, and work throughout the overall business process all the while improving the quality of the process and business outcomes. This talk describes, step-by-step, how to evolve from today’s vision of agile software development to a truly disciplined agile enterprise. It briefly examines the state of mainstream agile software development and argues for the need for a more disciplined approach to agile delivery that provides a solid foundation from which to scale. We then explore what it means to scale disciplined agile strategies tactically at the project/product level. We then work through what it means to strategically scale across your IT organization as a whole and discover what a Disciplined DevOps strategy looks like in practice. Your Disciplined Agile IT strategy, along with a lean business strategy, are key enablers of a full-fledged disciplined agile enterprise. The talk ends with advice for how to make this challenging organizational transition.

schedule 1 year ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

You often hear technical debt described as a personal failing. Why didn't you code with greater rigor? By creating technical debt, how could you have made life harder on people working in the code? More often than not, technical debt is the result of bigger, systemic problems. Chances are, you're not a bad person. You didn't want this to happen. It's the system, not you, that's chiefly responsible.In this talk, we will present some of the conclusions from the Agile Alliance's technical debt working group, which has looked into the systemic causes and consequences of technical debt. While marginal amounts of technical debt will always accrue, that does not explain why substantial technical debt is a widespread phenomenon. The organization in which software development teams work is the much bigger culprit. Many systemic causes, such as deadline pressures, under-investment in skills, and even the unwillingness to measure technical debt, conspire to create a growing burden on software professionals, who would otherwise choose not to create this problem if given the opportunity.Just as technical debt has systemic causes, the real cost of technical debt lies at the system level. The increasing drag on software innovation has effects not just on individual and team productivity, but on the software value stream, the portfolio, and the organization as a whole. Sometimes, the cost is obvious, such as the valuation of a start-up company's code; other times, the consequences are far more subtle and insidious.During this session, we will use the language and methods of systems theory to better come to grips with the causes and consequences of technical debt. Don't worry if systems thinking is unfamiliar — we will cover the basics during the talk. We will also do an exercise in which you will create a simple systems model of your own challenges with technical debt, and discuss how this model should help you shape a plan of action for dealing with technical debt.Ultimately, the goal of this session is to give you the tools to better deal with technical debt. Rather than blaming individual developers, you will be able to show the systemic sources of technical debt, and assess the relative value of addressing each of them. Rather than depending on technical measures to convey the costs of technical debt, we will help you to put the costs of technical debt in stark business terms.

schedule 1 year ago

40 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

A face-to-face conversation is the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team. So states the sixth principle of the Agile Manifesto.

Reality comes with a big "however." Work-at-home, outsourcing and inter-company partnerships mean that, more and more, we find ourselves n meetings where other participants are not in the same room. They may be around the corner or around the world. Some organizations invest in powerful tools to make this arrangement work well - or, sometimes, not so well. Others make do with audio only. Are we fooling ourselves when we call these events "meetings?" Maybe. Yet they're part of our world, so why not make the most of them?

In this lively session, you'll examine a proven pattern for facilitation, discover ways to overcome the challenges of virtual meetings and learn techniques that encourage meaningful participation. Most of these require more focus and ingenuity than expense.

Sue will share some of the techniques she learned as a teleworking pioneer in the '90s and a trainer of coaches, via distance, since 2003. Join us to explore ways you can bring your meetings with remote participants to life and respect everyone's time - including your own.

schedule 1 year ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Effective interactions, between product owners and designers and team members who develop and make those products real, are key to team, product and organizational success. It's reflected in the first value of the Agile Manifesto.

Still, one of the chief complaints, from both the product side and the dev side, is poor communication. The list of irritants includes: lack of clarity, lack of understanding, lack of time, lack of access, too many meetings, too much jargon, too many badly written user stories and too many people involved.

Communication isn''t the only obstacle, but it’s a big one - and it can be overcome with no cost or organizational disruption.

Regardless of the role we play on the team, part of everyone’s job is to create shared understanding. In this session, Marilyn, an experienced product owner and product manager, and Sue, a communication specialist and coach, will share their research about communication gaps in the product-development relationship and approaches that can close the gap. Join them to explore tips and ideas to improve communication flow and help teams move from concept to cash.

NOTE TO TAC TEAMBecause we are doing some original research on this topic, I would like to include a co-presenter, Marilyn Powers, PEng, who, at the time of posting, is not yet on confengine. Info about her is available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilynpowers

Here is more biographical info about Marilyn:Marilyn has more than 10 years experience bringing products and services to market as a Product Manager. As a licensed professional engineer, she has experience working in a variety of fields, from manufacturing to operations to simulation to SAAS software. Currently, Marilyn is a Product Manager at D2L, a leading Ed-tech company, where she works closely with Product Owners, Dev teams, Designers, Senior Leaders and many other stakeholders to deliver quality software tools to educational institutions and corporations who value learning and development. Her expertise is creating shared understanding between diverse groups, be it external customer advisory groups or internal stakeholders.

Previous presentations or workshopsMarilyn has presented at a variety of conferences over the past 20 years, the career highlight of which was a live demo on the main stage keynote at the D2L Fusion 2016 conference. Other conference presentations included Online Learning Conference ( New Orleans, LA 2017), Fusion (2015, 2016), Learning Impact Leadership Institute (San Antonio, TX 2016), Industrial Engineering Student Conference (Kitchener, 2016), ModSim World Canada (Montreal, 2010), Montreal Neurological Institute Day (Montreal, 2009), McGill University invited speaker on Haptics (Montreal, 2006). Prior to these presentations, Marilyn was an Instructor of Engineering at Mount Royal University in Calgary, AB.

schedule 1 year ago

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40 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Although self-organizing teams are crucial to carrying out a successful Agile transformation, organizations that implement Agile at scale invariably realize that the introduction of such teams forces the organization to re-engineer numerous aspects of its operating philosophy. In particular, various management layers are often removed. The individuals in these layers are routinely re-purposed or laid off.

This talk highlights the approaches I used as an Agilist in various organizations to help people in different roles on their journey of transitioning into the world of Agile. Specifically, the talk will focus on 5 key roles: Project Managers, Product Managers, BA Managers, Development Managers, and QA Managers. It will provide insight into how managers can effectively transition to some of the new Agile roles, or redefine their existing role to effectively fit in an Agile world.

The emphasis in this talk is on pragmatic strategies for managers that are struggling to find their place in this new Agile world. Armed with these strategies, participants will be able to effectively adapt to the Agile transformation, as well as discover potential new career paths for themselves and for the individuals reporting to them.

toddcharron - I'd Buy That For A Dollar

schedule 1 year ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Beginner

What happens if we build it and they don’t come?

Building features no one cares about is not only bad because the feature isn’t getting used, but is also a wasted opportunity that could have been used to build something truly valuable for your customers.

But how would we know?

In many companies, features get prioritized by the HiPPO principle (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). As it turns out, this is often not the most effective way to prioritize your backlog.

But if not this, then what?

In this workshop we explore what value is, how to talk about it, and how we might measure the value we have achieved.

Johanne Boyd / Carlo Rosales - Why can't the business be agile too? How ADP is incorporating business Agile practices to keep up with technology

schedule 1 year ago

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40 Mins

Talk

Beginner

Does your business struggle to catch up and understand the technical deliverables from your Sprint Reviews? Is there unnecessary re-work and scope creep because requirements are not properly described by the business? ADP has sought to address these issues by incorporating business Agile practices to keep up with technology. The result? Clearer requirements, strong engagement during Sprint Reviews and a collaborative solution with business readiness aligning with technical deliverables. Join our session to find out more!!

Mishkin Berteig / David Sabine - JIRA is the Worst Possible Choice

schedule 1 year ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

A rant, with evidence, on why electronic tools in general, and JIRA in particular, are anti-Agile. Participants will use the Agile Manifesto to evaluate the electronic tools they are currently familiar with. JIRA is used as a case study.

NOTE: Scrum asks us to have courage. The Agile Manifesto asks us to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. I hope the organizing committee will consider this proposal despite the risk that it might offend some tool vendors. If we can't speak freely about our experiences with tools, we will fail as a community.

schedule 1 year ago

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40 Mins

Talk

Beginner

We all know how people use design thinking to create better products and deliver delightful experiences to our users. However, design thinking can be an excellent tool to use for organizational change. In the case of organizational change, our product is the change that we are trying to drive, and our customers are those people who are impacted (internally and externally) and have to live with that change. In the same way that design thinking puts the user front-and-centre for products, it can be used to put people in the organization front-and-centre. In this talk we will discuss how design thinking works and, as a case study, how we have applied it at Scotiabank to help drive adoption of the Bank’s NPS customer insights into building solutions that serve our customers. In that program, previous internal processes were ineffective in pushing relevant data to delivery teams at the right time. Using a Lean or Agile approach would have provided some benefit, but taking a design thinking approach uncovered an array of useful insights to make the whole process more purposeful. Learn from this example to explore how you might incorporate design thinking to drive greater effectiveness and relevance for your team’s body of work.

James Gifford - Descaling the Enterprise Instead of Scaling Agility

schedule 1 year ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

In spite of all of the nuanced discussions, debates and frequent diatribes, scaling agile is about one thing: getting large groups of teams to deliver value in an organized fashion while maintaining empathy, rapport, trust, safety, and ownership across the enterprise. During this session, we will explore the case study of the Value Steam Container, looking at organization design, challenges and success. Focusing in on topics ranging from

Organization designs used by WL Gore, The Dunbar number

Delivery Triads - Product, Delivery, Technical Excellence

Venture capital style funding

Focusing on business value

The second half of the session is a workshop focused on creating a Value Stream Container and resource based on team funding

James Gifford - 5 Metrics to Create Safety and High Performing Teams

schedule 1 year ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Description:

I see that a lot of organizations use metrics in inappropriate ways to measure teams. At the heart of these metrics, nine times out of ten, are velocity and story points. These metrics lead to a lot of mistrust, fear, and bad technical practices. This talk will focus on shifting the focus to diagnostic metrics.

Before shifting focus to diagnostic metrics, we need to understand what inappropriate metrics are. When questioning teams about why their velocity was lower from one sprint to another, teams are more likely to inflate their estimates to avoid questions in the future. This is one of my scenarios. We will explore this case and my other top-ten based on the 165 teams I have interacted with. Focusing on one metric does not provide a balanced view of the team.

For balance, I promote five metrics. The combination of metrics balances each other. These five metrics are lead time, quality, happiness, agile maturity, and business value. Focusing on these five metric areas can be used as a diagnostic tool to help teams grow and support coaching. During the session, we will use my Excel-based tool and visual model to simulate this balance.

When you push shorter lead times (how fast) on a team with a lower agile maturity, the first thing to change is quality, followed by happiness and then the delivery of value. Conversely, if a team focuses on TDD, the first thing to change is quality, followed by agile maturity, reduction in lead time, and increased delivery of value.

Teaching teams to harness data in a positive way will help them to flourish.

schedule 1 year ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Data, the way that we process it and store it, is one of many important aspects of IT. Data is the lifeblood of our organizations, supporting real-time business processes and decision-making. For our DevOps strategy to be truly effective we must be able to safely and quickly evolve production databases, just as we safely and quickly evolve production code. Yet for many organizations their data sources prove to be less than trustworthy and their data-oriented development efforts little more than productivity sinkholes. We can, and must, do better.

If database evolution isn’t an explicit part of your DevOps strategy then you’re not really doing DevOps yet, are you?

schedule 1 year ago

60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Since the goal of all for-profit companies is to make profit, how effect is performance review in actually contributing to your business goal?

In this session, we will go through some activities to explore the hidden side of performance appraisal process, along with some story-telling and discussions on our perspectives.

Last but not least, there will be some suggestions on things that we can do in place of the traditional performance review.

If you want to unmask the mystery behind performance reviewIf the current performance appraisal process is one of your pain points, orIf you have experience and stories to share with us regarding performance evaluation, then come to this session and let's have a conversation

Ardita Karaj / Cheezy - What's my MVP?

schedule 1 year ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Are you having trouble finding a small Minimum Viable Product? You've heard about delivering in small, incremental releases, you've tried to chisel out a small slice out of the big product you have to deliver, but what you get is not viable and there's no incremental thinking around releases. Why is this so?

Join Ardi and Cheezy for this session where they will give you some tips and tricks on how to create your first MVP and then look down the road for future ones. They will give some examples from their experiences and challenges when dealing with teams that believe MVP does not apply to them.

You will leave this session with some ideas on how to prepare the strategy for your MVPs, how to work with your team to find your small product that is viable and still delivers value, and understand how to organize your efforts to deliver the product incrementally.

schedule 1 year ago

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40 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Ever been in a situation when the Product Manager comes and asks for “a couple of small changes that are high priority” and the team says “They’re kind of big. Which one do you want first? Really, really!”. “I want them all! As soon as possible.”.

There are many directions one can go from here. One can work harder or work smarter. While you probably know ways to work harder, but let’s explore ways to work smarter.

In this talk Ardita will share techniques that she has used which produce good results. She will talk about Product management, technical backbone, collaboration and how all to get Product managers and teams “singing” together in harmony and with focus.

Dave Dame - Coaching Leadership in an Agile Transformation

schedule 1 year ago

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40 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

How do you coach leaders in an agile transformation? How does coaching this group differ from coaching on an agile team? How do you coach Leadership as their peer? Agile is always thought of as being ‘down in the delivery layer’ of organizations. But, for us to be truly successful in embracing agility, we need to be more inclusive of all decision makers in the organization. That starts at the top. There are lot of cultural elements and tools that need to be changed across the organization. This requires dedicated change agents to be positioned within the environment of senior leaders to help them embrace agility in their everyday and strategic decision making. Most people want to do the right thing – it’s all about coaching so that, in the moments where our intentions and our decisions are tested by the status quo, we can help our leaders evaluate their choices. This means being a constant influencer, mirror and educator. And, it means sometimes you have to let things go. Successfully coaching leaders through agile transformation requires very purposeful influencing. In this session, we will discuss how to help bring senior leaders along an agile change journey as well as the primary challenges you are likely to encounter along the way and proven mechanisms to help you push through.

schedule 1 year ago

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40 Mins

Talk

Beginner

When Agile first came on the scene it was premised around putting the customer first. But, over the years its focus has evolved and the general perception of Agile today is that it’s mostly a tool for delivering software. Agile’s original focus was mainly on developers and testers, but it never really contemplated design thinking as a discipline. Design thinking, which has been around for decades but is only recently having its ‘moment in the sun’, compliments agile beautifully in that it focuses on trying to solve the right problems for the right people. Design thinking allows us to iterate and test assumptions before too much coding and production-readiness is done, which helps ensure the team is investing in the right things at every stage. It really provides a focus on innovating rather than simply burning down a backlog. In this talk we will discuss different ways to incorporate design thinking into the agile process. You will learn how to yield benefits from bringing these two practices together – most importantly how to best serve the users of the product or service you are delivering. At Scotiabank, we’ve been using these fantastic tools in combination for over a year. It is a journey, and although we haven’t completely solved everything yet, there are a lot of lessons we have learned that can be applied elsewhere.

Louis Morisset - What is the impact of your organization's culture on your agile transformation

schedule 1 year ago

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60 Mins

Panel

Intermediate

More and more companies are, right or wrong reasons, deciding to do agile transformations. In this talk, we question ourselves on what it takes to start an agile transformation in big corporation. We will introduce the maturity model of Mickael Spayd and Lyssa Adkins and reflect on the importance of understanding the maturity level of our company before starting an agile transformation. We will also explore, based on each maturity levels, what are the realistic expectations of an agile transformation and where people should focus on to help more the initiative forward. Finally we will also look at the individuals level of maturity and see how this impacts their companies agile transformation as well as the people themselves.

schedule 1 year ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Getting to Agile is not easy, doing so with remote teams is more so. As a trainer you need to convince, often sceptical, audience of the soundness and viability of Agile postulates. In particular you need to show that self-organizing is not just a sound bite but rather an achievable goal. This workshop will present an original approach to doing so when training a distributed team.

The counting game is designed to be played over the phone, or an audio/video bridge, with or without any additional collaboration tools. It is simple to understand and difficult to get right at first. To solve the problem the teams will need to organize into roles, iterate over approaches and come up with a working algorithm. The winning teams will organize themselves in 3-5 iterations into efficient counting machines able to accurately process greater and greater inputs.

schedule 1 year ago

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40 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

These days, almost every organization is showing interest in Agile. We seem to have all the ingredients for effective transformations: well-known practices, detailed processes, ever-improving tools, extensive literature, myriad certifications, and many consultants. How is it, then, that so few organizations are truly agile?

Gil Broza, author of “The Agile Mindset” and “The Human Side of Agile”, thinks that one particular ingredient has been overlooked in the mad rush to adopt Agile. In this session, he leads us on an exploration of that ingredient and its place in an Agile transformation.

Dave Sharrock - Avoiding the Dilbert Syndrome: What does the manager do now?

schedule 1 year ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

We answer the question “What does the manager do?” We focus on enabling flow and value delivery, using visible progress to guide behaviour, holding teams accountable with iterative and incremental delivery and increasing throughput with catalytic leadership.

We focus on how traditional management responsibilities move from tactical to strategic.

Line management - push responsibilities into the team, with managers keeping an eye on decisions and looking for outliers

Functional management - facilitate functional leaderships through an advocacy role within communities of practice (instead of waiting and hoping good practices will emerge)

Project management - the product owner/scrum master handles much of the overall problem solving/identification, responsibility for progress, and team management

Catalytic Leadership - enable continual flow through the team for fastest possible delivery to the customer. Get things done without being the choke point

There are many dependencies across the organization to understand and smooth-out. Catalytic leadership guides your teams to high-performance through the right guidelines, constraints, and safe-to-learn environment.